US Politics: Now with Alt Facts

[aceluby]

18 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Yea, this is going to happen across all the agencies. It started with the gag orders. I mentioned this the other day.

Not sure why. His press secretary already said which states will be targeted (hint: CA and NY). Republicans already heavily suppress the vote in their states. Why is it a stretch to believe that they will want to do it more? Democrats win elections when more people vote. Republicans win elections when less people vote. It's not rocket science but simple logic informed by the experience of the last 4 years.

Trump doesn't have to be the devil incarnate. He just has to allow Republicans to do what they are already doing. In VA for example, there is going to be a bill introduced that splits up the electoral college vote based on county. The winner take all will go away and most of Democrats live in 4 counties (Loudon, Fairfax, Prince William, Arlington), it's possible for Republicans to take quite a few of the votes. There is no Voting Rights Act anymore so anything they do isn't subject to Federal review to ensure unfair discrimination. I know this is already happening in Nebraska/Maine but if more bluish states with Republican leadership do the same, it'll be hard for Democrats to have a chance in the general. We'll see.

I mean, it's genius in the most evil way possible.  Spend a TON of money in statewide elections that are close in 2010 to get majorities.  Then use the census to redraw lines utilizing street level microdata to ensure state and congressional majorities for at least a decade.  Then use those majorities to push electoral votes to be based off of congressional lines which are already rigged in their favor.  Once the systematic checks and balances are no longer in place, nuke the fillibuster and only spend $$$ on senate races from that point on.

We're witnessing the fall of our democracy, and it's wrapped in a flag holding a bible telling you all your problems are someone else's fault.

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

He's an authoritarian. One aspect of authoritarian leadership is to knowingly say false things, things that are obviously false, and get your supporters and underlings to repeat them, even though they too know it's false. That's how you begin to own them.

I tend to think of it as a different thing.

What authoritarians do is state their claims - often falsehoods - in order to justify the actions they want to take. In other words if you want to lock up, say, Muslims, you have to state some claims that would lead a person to naturally believe that the action of locking muslims up is reasonable.

If you want to, say, suppress voting rights across the nation, you have to state claims that would indicate that this is a reasonable course of action to take. 

If you want to, say, be able to punish a city and use military force on the populace, you have to state claims that make others believe that it is justified to do so and even encourage them to do it.

[Samantha Stark]

Awarding electoral votes in a proportional form is actually more inclusive. There are tons of GOP votes in California and New York that basically have their votes nullified by the liberal metropolises in their states, and the same is true of democrat voters in places like Texas. Carry on with the democracy is failing freakout though.

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

The more important thing is that you repeatedly told me he wouldn't do any of these things, or couldn't. Now he is, and you're saying that your goalpost is now 'he didn't do it RIGHT AWAY so it's fine.

No, he's not going to do them at all. He is doing a great job of selling these executive orders as fulfillment of campaign promises, but they don't come anywhere near doing so and further actions aren't likely to do so either. All of the reasons why actually doing what he said ranges from difficult to impossible remain; he's merely claiming to have done them and the media and Democrats are helping him because it fires up their base.

[Mindwalker]

32 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

It's actually not that uncommon for people who are professional public speakers to study Hitler's speeches. The first thing we had to read in my Persuasion and Propaganda class in college was Mein Kampf.

That said, it's still a terrible look to keep that book by your bed.

But you probably read it to dissect it and study how much harm "persuasion and propaganda" can do.

Hey, are we 1000 percent (sic) sure that he was born in the USA? Just asking, nothing racist...

[Kalbear]

29 minutes ago, Altherion said:

No, he's not going to do them at all. He is doing a great job of selling these executive orders as fulfillment of campaign promises, but they don't come anywhere near doing so and further actions aren't likely to do so either. All of the reasons why actually doing what he said ranges from difficult to impossible remain; he's merely claiming to have done them and the media and Democrats are helping him because it fires up their base.

And your evidence for this is...what, exactly? Another way to say it is this:

What is going to stop him from doing what he has so far declared and actually done? You said political will will stop him from gutting the EPA - but so far, that isn't true. You said that he can't practically deport 11 million people - but he has put in the groundwork to do precisely that. 

Here's the next 4 XOs on immigration, by the way. They call for repeal of DACA/DAPA, restricting visas based entirely on what economic ground they might have or getting reimbursed by the people sponsoring, massive change to H1-B programs and the like. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

 Apparently this whole voter fraud intuition that Trump is pursuing was fueled by golfer Bernard Langer, who is a citizen of Germany and was upset that he wasn't allowed to vote....

 

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/us/politics/trump-bernhard-langer-voting-fraud.html?_r=0&referer=https://t.co/MU5TAHryYL

[SkynJay]

1 hour ago, Samantha Stark said:

Awarding electoral votes in a proportional form is actually more inclusive. There are tons of GOP votes in California and New York that basically have their votes nullified by the liberal metropolises in their states, and the same is true of democrat voters in places like Texas. Carry on with the democracy is failing freakout 

See that would be a good argument for the popular vote.  Instead it is taking a swing state that the Dems could win sometimes and make it a non player ( gladly giving a small percentage to the blue team).  Note Texas is not playing with this because their votes are safely red.

It is further enriching one parties power by skewing geography, and further taking more voting power from Urban areas.

[Samantha Stark]

The Democrats won 43% of the vote in Texas, including all major cities.

[Mexal]

1 hour ago, SkynJay said:

See that would be a good argument for the popular vote.  Instead it is taking a swing state that the Dems could win sometimes and make it a non player ( gladly giving a small percentage to the blue team).  Note Texas is not playing with this because their votes are safely red.

It is further enriching one parties power by skewing geography, and further taking more voting power from Urban areas.

The other issue, and this is the major one, is that congressional districts have been so gerrymandered, that you can end up having millions of people in a single district and give unfair power to the rural few. Democrats could win the popular vote by 3.5million but lose the electoral vote by 150+ if all states followed a proportional system where rural voters have unequal power over metropolitan voters. It could never be more inclusive.

[Jaxom 1974]

Is/was this a real thing? I can't tell...can't be, right?

[all swedes are racist]

doubtful. would expect even most squishy lib doofus to not to @ tag DJT when broadcasting intent to leaking WH communiques/intentions 

[The Marquis de Leech]

5 hours ago, Samantha Stark said:

Awarding electoral votes in a proportional form is actually more inclusive. There are tons of GOP votes in California and New York that basically have their votes nullified by the liberal metropolises in their states, and the same is true of democrat voters in places like Texas. Carry on with the democracy is failing freakout though.

Talk about intellectual dishonesty. Splitting the electoral votes of Blue States while not splitting the electoral votes of Red States is a blatant gerrymander.

If you want Republicans in California or Democrats in Texas to actually count, abolish the EC altogether, and go for a popular vote.

[The Marquis de Leech]

8 hours ago, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

According to Ivana Trump, he slept with Mein Kampf and studied it thoroughly.

To be fair to Donald, Mein Kampf is a great cure for insomnia.

(I'm not joking. Hitler was an amazing orator, but a terrible author).

[Martell Spy]

 I remember Trumpites on this board claiming there wouldn't be a deportation force. Well, here it is. Now all they need is their brown shirts. Yeah I know, they haven't officially been hired yet, so we can all rest easy.

Quote

To enforce these deportations, the administration is planning to hire a force of 5,000 new border agents and 10,000 new immigration officers. Or, a “deportation force” if you will.

The Scariest Portions of Trump’s Big Immigration Executive Orders

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/01/25/the_scariest_portions_of_trump_s_big_immigration_executive_orders.html

Mattis, Pompeo stunned by CIA 'black sites' report
The two officials in charge of Trump's terrorism detainee policies were 'blindsided' by a draft calling for the CIA to revisit techniques critics call torture.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/torture-mattis-pompeo-defense-234180

Trump's call for election-fraud probe fraught with peril
Former Justice Department lawyers and prominent Democrats are warning the president against a blatantly political exercise.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trump-voter-fraud-234183

 

[Samantha Stark]

2 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Talk about intellectual dishonesty. Splitting the electoral votes of Blue States while not splitting the electoral votes of Red States is a blatant gerrymander.

If you want Republicans in California or Democrats in Texas to actually count, abolish the EC altogether, and go for a popular vote.

 

As a Canadian living in a system where popular vote is the measure, I have to say it;s a terrible system.

[The Marquis de Leech]

1 hour ago, Samantha Stark said:

As a Canadian living in a system where popular vote is the measure, I have to say it;s a terrible system.

But Canada has First Past the Post?

[Happy Ent]

11 hours ago, Mudguard said:

I have no problem with risk limiting audits, which I think is a good idea and provides a balance between cost and utility.  Full mandatory recount seems like overkill to me absent evidence that it's needed.  But the time for establishing these procedures is before the election.  Asking for recounts in a select number of states that were chosen for the extremely remote chance of flipping the election is not principled.  It's desperate.

Using the logic that because it's possible to hack voting machines, we should enact laws that make an audit or recount mandatory, does that mean that since it's possible that mass voter fraud occurred or that it's possible that in person voter fraud occurs, we should enact additional regulations like voter ID laws to prevent them, regardless of whether such fraud is extremely unlikely?

I promise you that Alex (and, to a far lesser extent, people like me) are actually involved in improving election systems all over the world, all year around, no matter the election cycle. Conferences happen all the time, committee meetings happen all the time, papers are written all the time, governments invite him (and even me) for consulting on constitutional matters all the time. The fact that this makes it into the news only around election days has nothing to do with fickleness of advocacy, but with the news cycle.

For the second paragraph, you are simply wrong. Fraud is extremely likely (look at the stakes!), and successful fraud is undetectable by definition. This is the fundamental principle behind the construction of voting mechanisms. Voter ID laws, again, are a thing that most other democracies have fixed, and therefore enjoy higher trust in the electoral process. The free world is not interested in having its biggest player (the US) undergoing a crisis of trust in the electoral process. (This crisis includes, among many other things a crisis of trust in identification, authentication, secrecy, and correctness.) This is fixable, most countries have indeed fixed it. So will the US. 

[Altherion]

It's interesting how the ascent of Trump has revealed the extent and limitations of feminism among the Democrats. For example, Kellyanne Conway was the first woman to be the manager of a successful Presidential campaign as well as a successful businesswoman who did all of this without sacrificing her personal life (she has four children). One would think that feminists would promote this extraordinary woman as a role model... but she is on the wrong political side so such promotion has been quite muted and has mostly come from the right.

More recently, Joss Whedon (who is supposedly a feminist author) tweeted the following:

Quote

Whedon took to Twitter on Tuesday — where he's been spewing anti-Trump lines for weeks — to insult Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner.

"Hey, keep your eyes on this f---ing prize too. He's a Voldemort in training," the comic book creator wrote, along with a photo of Jared Kushner in the Oval Office.

"Unlike the Pekingese he married under, can play the long game," he continued, taking a jab at Ivanka.

A Pekingese is a breed of dog and a female dog is a... well, you know.

[mormont]

Really, if your argument is 'feminism means praising every woman who is successful, just because she is a woman' then you know nothing about feminism and probably shouldn't comment.

As for electoral fraud, the way I look at it is this: there is more than one way to prevent electoral fraud. Like all crimes, prevention is better than cure. Requiring voter ID is intervening too late in the process, because by that time you already have someone who has decided to cheat, and if they've gone that far, acquiring false ID isn't a particularly significant additional obstacle.

A far more important way to prevent voter fraud is to ensure good turnout. Higher turnout means that, in order for voter fraud to have any effect and therefore be worth attempting, it has to be on a much bigger and more organised scale, which does more to make fraud difficult than any voter ID requirement could ever do.